Days of Our Lives Emmy winner Darin Brooks has the starring role in Spike TV’s new frat boy comedy series Blue Mountain State—and it is very blue indeed. Premiering January 12, it features Brooks as Alex, a talented but unmotivated freshman quarterback who’s content to play second string so he can boff babes (preferably two at once) and party hearty with his buds (played by Sam Jones III from Smallville and Chris Romano from The Sarah Silverman Program). Hotshots from the powerhouse agency UTA came to the Blue set in Montreal, saw Brooks in action, and quickly snapped him up. You’ll see why. Watching Brooks in this new show is like getting that first glimpse of James Roday in Psych or Zachary Levi in Chuck. You know without a doubt that a comedy star is born. Here Brooks gives us the blow-by-blow on his naughty new gig.

The pilot of your show is completely depraved and disgusting and I loved every minute of it. I could not stop laughing. And that episode is tame compared to the rest of the season! We’ve got something coming up with Cloris Leachman that you’re not going to believe.

There’s a hazing ritual scene where you run the length of a football field in a jock strap with an Oreo cookie up your butt. If you drop it, you have to eat the cookie. Something tells me they didn’t prepare you for this in drama school.I’m not going to lie. Some of the stuff we’ve done has probably left me scarred for life. I showed the pilot to my parents and my dad said, “This is great! This is awesome!” My mom was, like, “Well, dear, this is… uh… cute. But I don’t think we can show it to the relatives.”

Now we know why you had such a potty mouth—and got bleeped—at the podium when you won your Daytime Emmy last year.Here’s what happened: I left Days in May, immediately went to Canada for three months to shoot the entire season of Blue Mountain State, then came back to L.A. at the end of August just in time to go find myself a suit and get to the Emmy ceremony. It was nuts! Winning the award came as such a shock, which is why I swore on national television. [Laughs] Also, it’s hard to stop now that I get paid to swear.

Your character thinks he can get away with absolutely anything—and does. Is this the ultimate fantasy role?Yeah! But Alex doesn’t do it in any evil, vindictive way. He’s a good-hearted kid who just wants to get by, and nobody’s going to keep him from doing that. For an actor, it’s very freeing. Days was kind of like a machine, you knock out so damn many pages every day, so damn many episodes every year, you shoot weddings that go on for a week. That’s not a bad thing but it is a machine. Blue Mountain State is done on the fly. They let you improvise. They want you to improvise. I’ve always got crazy s--t playing in my mind, and they let me go with it.

What must the Canadians think of you guys?They’re so low-key and polite and decent up there, and here come the Americans to town to shoot this gross little raunchy-ass TV show. I’m not the only one scarred for life. So is Montreal!

Days let you out of your contract for this series, right?Yeah, and they were great about it. I still had a year left to go on my deal, so anything I can ever do for them I will do. Days was the best learning experience of my life. Those folks in Salem will always be my first family.